Jock Colville

Sir John Rupert Colville, short Jock (* January 28, 1915, † November 1987) was private secretary to several British Prime Minister and Princess Elizabeth.

Life

Colville was one of three sons of Hon George and Lady Cynthia Colville. His grandfather was the Viscount Colville of Culross peer, his grandmother Marchioness of Crewe. Personally not wealthy, he had access to the English nobility, which promoted his career and social life.

Graduate of Trinity College ( Cambridge ), Colville had traveled down by the Soviet Union, to Athos and the Danube. He spoke fluent German and French, came after a trip to Italy in September 1937 as third secretary in the East Division of the British Foreign Office in Whitehall and was involved in Persia, Turkey, Palestine and the Gulf States. Two years later he became one of the private secretaries Arthur Neville Chamberlain and 1940-1945 by Winston Churchill, interrupted from one year service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve ( 1942) with training in South Africa. 1945 Colville was acquired by Clement Attlee and then returned to the Foreign Ministry, the area south-east Europe, back. 1947 to 1949 he was private secretary to Princess Elizabeth and then two years head of administration of the British Embassy in Lisbon. When Churchill was Prime Minister again from 1951 to 1955, he became its first private secretary. He then left politics for 30 more years in the banking and financial business work. Among other things, he managed the estate of the Churchills, was Director of the Ottoman Bank as well as 25 years of UK subsidiary of BASF.

Colville married in 1948 Lady Margaret Egerton, one of the ladies of the court of Elizabeth. Both had two sons and a daughter and lived in Hampshire. In 1949 he was awarded the Victoria Medal, in 1955 and 1974 Bathorden the accolade.

Author of several books, today his diaries from the time at 10 Downing Street from 1939 to 1955 are the best known. He describes it objectively and relatively emotionless the different actors of the Allied policy and the political decisions of the time. In Churchill College, Cambridge, which is connected to the Churchill Archives Centre and in the store his diaries, is named an honorary one space after it.

Works

  • Fools' Pleasure. A leisurely journey down the Danube, to the Black Sea, the Greek Islands and Dalmatia. Methuen & Co., London, 1935.
  • Man of valor. The life of Field Marshal Viscount Gort the, VC, GCB, DSO, MVO, MC. Collins, London 1972
  • Footprints in Time. Memories. Collins, 1976
  • Portrait of a general. A Chronicle of the Napoleonic Wars. Michael Russell, Salisbury 1980.
  • Strange Inheritance. Michael Russell, Salisbury 1983.
  • The Fringes of Power. Downing Street Diaries, 1939-55: September 1939 - September 1955 v. 1 Sceptre, 1986, ISBN 0340402695
  • The Churchillians. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986
  • Downing Street Diaries 1939-1945. Settlers, 1988
  • Those Lambtons! . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1988.
  • Person in World War II (United Kingdom)
  • Author
  • Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
  • Companion of the Order of the Bath
  • Knight Bachelor
  • Briton
  • Born in 1915
  • Died in 1987
  • Man
Elizabeth II Lady (word) John Vereker, 6th Viscount Gort Integrated Authority File
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